Charlotte CKC Scrapbook Convention - A Mini Recap

Wow - where to begin? Pat, Suzanne, "My Friend Kathy" and I rolled back into Aiken around 9:00 Saturday night, having thoroughly enjoyed ourselves in Charlotte at the CKC Convention.

We arrived in NC on Thursday afternoon, checked into the Hilton, ran over to the convention center and picked up our CKC registration kit, and then went for an early dinner. At 6:30 we attended a three hour class - Sketches for Scrapbooking.... though honestly I do not remember the real name of the class (and by the way, this will be an on going theme in this post). Essentially 10 different companies/vendors at the show were given sketches and were asked to create a layout and class kits based on the sketch. Over the next three hours all 10 companies presented there project and walked us through assembly of their 12 x 12 page. At the end of the evening we found out that most of the vendors had matching page kits at their booths! So cool, the first night we created the first 10 pages of 10 double page layouts!

Friday found us up and in line at the convention center for early vendor faire entry. Because we had each registered for at least four classes (okay in our cases it was 5+ classes each) we were able to get into the vendor faire an hour early. Sadly, think Disney early entry.... where many, many others qualify for early entry.

Heading toward the line:The early entry hype is part of what we enjoy. Vendors will walk the line encouraging shoppers to hit their booths; coupons and samples are dispensed... Did I mention that Starbucks is located next to the line? Think 1000 coffee hyped women waiting to scrap shop!!! A lot of the vendors have extra % off for the first 50 customers so it is important to have a shopping plan. ... Which we did!

Here we are doing that thing we do (note the $$ in Kathy's hand all set to be passed along):

The next two hours were a scrap shopper's dream..... Just about anything you could think of was available. Most of the big company vendors had their new paper lines available from CHA, as well as spellbinder new nesties, cricut products (though there was no gypsy), tools, embellies, .... you name it! The photo of the vendor faire DOES NOT show all of the booths... I couldn't fit it all in a single photo.

And this is where we do the thing we do:

Ohhhh, and guess who I met? Cricut Dan, the cricut man! Dan was just the nicest man and so informative. Almost every time I passed his booth he had a flock of women gathered around design studio and an expression machine. Gooooo Dan - the Cricut Ladies Man!!

I had two classes on Friday: an SEI class and a Quick Quotes class. SEI ALWAYS ( and I mean ALWAYS) does a great class. We always learn new techniques and they give out lots of door prizes. This was my first Quick Quotes class and I really liked the projects we created... and the instructor was fabulous. And of course for the four hours between my classes I was shopping.

Friday's haul of loot:

Saturday - okay we were getting tired. We started the day with another two hours of shopping, followed by classes again. Pat and I only had two classes on Saturday so we had more shopping time than Kathy and Suzanne. On Friday I shopped from a rough list... I was looking for a number of specific items and I found most. On Saturday I enjoyed strolling the booths and seeing what I had missed in my rush to fulfil my list. And the slower paced netted me a few unique finds as well as bargains.

Saturday's smaller haul of loot:

My Saturday classes were Basic Grey Latest and Greatest and a Technique Tuesday stamping techniques class. I love the BG class and take it every year. I liked the TT class as well.

Here we are in the Technique Tuesday class:

I realize that this is a "broad stroke" view of the convention. But I must add: if there is a CKC scrapbooking convention any where you are near, do not walk, RUN to the nearest convention.